Matisse's Nymphs

Cézanne's Other Bathers

(Left) Cézanne, Paul. Large Bathers. 1906. National Gallery, London.
(Right) Cézanne, Paul. Five Bathers. 1887. Offentliche Kunstammlung Basel, Kunstmuseum.

Many of Cézanne's paintings throughout his career depict both bathers and nymphs, yet the message behind them is dark and negative, stemming from his own personal and emotional complexes dealing with women and sexuality. These insecurities about women most likely began when he was twenty and fell in love with a young woman named Justine. Not only did she turn out to be in love with one of his friends but she barely even acknowledged that he even existed (Harris 13). Many of the emotional problems dealing with women that he developed as an adult are seen in his art that portrays both men and women, and women by themselves. His bather and nymph paintings are often categorized into groups by theme, with each revealing something different about Cézanne's psyche. Cézanne's earliest paintings of nymphs and bathers frequently show both males and females, often as nymphs and satyrs, in the same scene. These depict extreme tensions
and violence. He shows females as the victims of sexual violence and rape, yet sometimes depicts them as the villain, using their seductive powers for ill-will. These reflect his fear of contact and relationships with the opposite sex. Later works depict no violence but show women in a maliciously seductive manner, showing that Cézanne views women as temptresses and revealing his lack of trust in them (Krumrine 23-24). Later bather paintings, from the time period that includes Three Bathers, depict women without any men present. In these, he has detached himself from women and their sexuality on a conscious level, despite the fact that his frightened unconscious still creeps in to many paintings. Making men merely observers to these scenes, Cézanne thereby places himself outside the realm of their power over him (Krumrine et al. 83). This power struggle is further depicted by the rigid composition and structure that he creates in many of the bather paintings. This strict composition is repeated numerous times and allows Cézanne full control over the women in the paintings, something he felt incapable of in real life (Krumrine et al 137). Furthermore, the act of bathing not only represents the Christian of baptism but the need for cleansing. Cézanne shows women in an effort to cleanse themselves as an effort to purify them of their malicious actions and evil natures (Krumrine et al 105). These bather paintings are intriguing and provide much room for further investigation. For more information on Cézanne's art please refer to:
Cézanne & Virgil
Cézanne & Violence
Cézanne's Watercolors

(Above) Cézanne, Paul. The Fight of Love. 1880. The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
(Right) Cézanne, Paul. The Temptation of St. Anthony. 1875. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

The Barnes Mural

Matisse, Henri. The Dance II. 1932. The Barnes Foundation, Merion Station.

In 1930, Henri Matisse traveled to the United States to judge paintings at the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh. This trip would lead to his overwhelming mural, The Dance II (1932). While visiting, he went to see the two largest collections of his work in America. One of these two was at the Barnes Foundation in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. The gallery was owned by doctor, millionaire, and art enthusiast Albert Barnes who began collecting Matisse's art before World War I. The walls of the Barnes Foundation are filled with famous works by masters including Renior, Seurat, Van Gogh and Cézanne. Included in the many Matisse's collected by Barnes is Joy of Life (1906). It was on this visit that Barnes told Matisse that he wanted him to paint a mural for his main hall of the gallery. It was to be forty-seven feet long and eleven feet high and span the three arches above a massive set of windows. Matisse had never done anything so large before but accepted the job in 1931. Barnes sent an enormous canvas to Matisse in Nice and gave him full artistic control over the work. Since Matisse was painting directly onto the canvas unlike most other mural painters, the process involved ladders, trestles and charcoal attached to a bamboo pole for outlines. He also used huge pieces of cut-paper as templates and to try out different colors. This idea later developed into his cut-outs. With The Dance I (1932) finally completed in 1932, Matisse prepared to send the entire canvas to Barnes and learned that the whole mural was too short by about five feet. Rather than adding on an extra five feet Matisse started over with the correct measurements and completed an entirely new mural in April of 1932. It is this second mural, The Dance II, that hangs at the Barnes Foundation (Mannering 63-66).

Related Artwork

Matisse created many other works depicting bathers and nymphs in addition to the ones mentioned earlier in this discussion of his revision of Cézanne's message. Of these, two stand out as masterpieces of Matisse's career. These are Bathers with a Turtle (1908) and Bathers by a Stream (1916).

Matisse, Henri. Bathers with a Turtle. 1908. The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis.

Bathers with a Turtle (1908) is also part of Matisse's revision of Cézanne's Three Bathers because it completely separates itself from it in terms of composition and fully portrays the image of women that Matisse wants us to see. There is no scenery to enclose the women like Cézanne includes in his paintings. The women here are interacting with nature, as we see in Joy of Life, beyond the simple and passive interaction with the water that we see in Three Bathers. They are nurturing a small turtle, whose placement in a completely unnatural setting makes it extremely vulnerable. The women here are shown as caring for the turtle. They are passive, calm, and compassionate, something never seen in Cézanne's women. In Bathers with a Turtle Matisse has shown women as figures that are to be celebrated and both the givers and caretakers of life.

Matisse, Henri. Bathers by a Stream. 1916. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.

Bathers by a Stream appears later than most of Matisse's nymph-like figures and the style is very much representative of that time period in Matisse's artwork. The painting also demonstrates an influence from his trip to Morocco and depicts the beach at Tangier. The black strip at the center of the painting is what was a waterfall in earlier sketches of the painting and now simply suggests the idea of a waterfall. The leaves have also been elongated to be more tropical than the earlier works. The figures hover, not occupying any specific space in the scene which is reminiscent of his other Moroccan-influenced works where the objects simply exist in space (Flam 414-416).

Matisse the Late Bloomer

Matisse, Henri. Self-Portrait. 1906. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

Although Henri Matisse was almost thirty when he bought Cézanne's Three Bathers, his career as an artist was still relatively young in comparison with his contemporaries. Matisse's late move into the art world makes it somewhat less surprising that Three Bathers became so influential to him. Matisse began law school at the University of Paris when he was eighteen and worked as a clerk in a law office. His interest in art did not begin until he had his appendix removed in 1890 and bought some paints and a book about painting to keep him busy while he was bedridden. He taught himself to paint by copying other paintings before going to Paris at the age of twenty-three to study art (Mannering 13-14). He began by taking art classes to help him pass the entrance examination for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but failed and in 1892 began studying with Gustave Moreau, a professor at Beaux-Arts. He finally passed the entrance examinations to Beaux-Arts in 1895 and studied there until his marriage to Amélie Parayre in 1898. While studying with Moreau, Matisse learned about art by copying paintings of the Old Masters at the Louvre, where he produced over nineteen copies (Watkins). When he bought Three Bathers, Matisse had just completed his studies and married Amélie. He had done little work on his own thus far and was not very far removed from his copies at the Louvre so it is only natural that he used Cézanne's Three Bathers as a template from which to copy many stylistic features that he found admirable in Cézanne's art.

About the Author

Jana Holt is amazing in every way. She likes ice cream, shoes, and music. She does not like allergies, living in a 9x10 double, or those crazy centipedes that have attacked her building. She has also promised to give a shout out to Justin, and now he has to cook something.

Jana is class of 2008 at Princeton and currently does not have a major nor does she want to have a major because majors = independent work. But since she does have to decide someday she thinks she wants to do Public Policy with a certificate in Environmental Studies. Jana graduated from Strath Haven High School in 2004 and is very happy about that because now she can't get in trouble for lack of a hall pass. She "summers" at home in Wallingford, PA, living it up in the Philly suburbs. She also does not like people who ask you where you "summer." Summer is not a verb. Going back to things she does actually like, Jana's favorite ice creams are cookie dough, coffee heath bar, and Half-Baked. Her favorite shoes are generally anything metallic....or her palm-tree flip-flops. Jana's favorite music is Phish, Joni Mitchell, and Keller Williams. She also secretly likes Shakira. Other things Jana enjoys are field hockey, naps and shopping

Jana's parting words are: TOG, "you're a grand old flag" and "you hold the key to my little locked room." She wants everyone to know that possums are slow, animals don't wear underpants, spongebob underwear probably won't fit you, and that this is really awkward. She also wants to give a shout out to the lovely ladies of 1938, her awesome big sister Lydia and everyone who rocked out with her in Writing 153.

.

Works Cited

Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank all of my classmates for their feedback and advice on this project. I would especially like to thank Clelia Zacharias, Michael Cwidack-Kusbach, Brett Masters, Aaron Weil and Namita Bisaria.

Cézanne's Artwork:

Cézanne, Paul. The Fight of Love. The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Cézanne, Paul. Five Bathers. Offentliche Kunstammlung Basel, Kunstmuseum.

Cézanne, Paul. Large Bathers. National Gallery, London.

Cézanne, Paul. The Temptation of St. Anthony. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Cézanne, Paul. Three Bathers. Musée de Petit Palais, Paris.

Matisse's Artwork :

Matisse, Henri. Bathers with a Turtle. The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis.

Matisse, Henri. Dance II. Barnes Foundation, Merion Pa.

Matisse, Henri. Joy of Life. Barnes Foundation, Merion Pa.

Matisse, Henri. Luxury I. Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Matisse, Henri. Luxury II. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

Matisse, Henri. Luxury, Tranquility and Pleasure. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Matisse, Henri. Pastoral. Musée de la Ville de Paris, Paris.

Matisse, Henri. Self-Portrait. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

Other Works Cited:

Durozoi, Gérard. Matisse. New York, NY: Portland House, 1989.

Flam, Jack. Matisse: The Man and his Art. 1869-1918. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Harris, Nathaniel. The Art of Cézanne. New York, New York: Excalibur Books, 1982.

Krumrine, Mary Louise Elliott. Cézanne's Bathers: Autobiographical Origins of Form and Content. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1986.

Krumrine, Mary Louise, Gottfried Boehm, and Christian Geelhaar. Paul Cézanne: The Bathers. Museum of Fine arts, Basel. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989.

Steinkraus, W.E. "Two Kinds of Inspiration or More?" British Journal of Aesthetics. Vol. 19 (1979): p 38-43.

Wilson, Sarah. Matisse. New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1992.

Watkins, Nicholas. "Matisse, Henri." Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press. 2004. 8 May 2005. http://www.groveart.com.

Conclusion

Now having completed our discussion of Matisse's revision of Cézanne's portrayal of women in Three Bathers we can go back to Matisse's definitive work in celebration of women, Joy of Life. While by the time he painted Joy of Life Matisse had not fully completed his revision of Cézanne's Three Bathers, it fully represents Matisse's view of women and the message that motivated him as he revised Cézanne's view of women as shown in the piece. By revising Cézanne's view of women, Matisse was ideologically able to salvage his "master" or "god of painting," thereby enabling himself to continue looking to Cézanne's skill for inspiration. As such, Joy of Life, dreamlike and playful, illustrates a celebration. When people gather to celebrate, there is music, dancing and talking, just like in Joy of Life. The women are relaxed, peaceful, and nonthreatening. The scene shows various groups of nymphs and individuals doing many different things, implying that in this world there is room for anyone to join in the celebration. This is exactly what Matisse has done by revising Cézanne's image of women as both victims and villains. In Matisse's revision, women are no longer predators and prey but nurturing caregivers. As Matisse strengthens his message, the influence of Three Bathers diminishes and eventually disappears, indicating that the dark image of women has disappeared as well. This was not only symbolized in Matisse's paintings but actualized in his own life. In 1936 he gave Three Bathers to the Musée Petit Palais in Paris. In the same letter in which he claimed that the painting was Cézanne's most important and monumental, he explains its importance to him: "[Three Bathers] has sustained me spiritually in moments of my career as an artist. I have drawn form it my faith and my perseverance" (qtd Steinkraus 38). Yet by 1936 Matisse had learned all that he felt he could from Three Bathers and decided to let go of the painting he had grasped even in the direst financial crises (Wilson 15). If it were not for Three Bathers and Cézanne's neurotic fear of and inhibition towards women, many of Matisse's masterpieces, such as Joy of Life would never have been created. Matisse gave Cézanne's women the beauty and life they deserved.

Matisse, Henri. Joy of Life. 1906. Barnes Foundation, Merion Pa.

The Revision Process

More specifically, this celebration of women begins with the painting Luxury, Tranquility and Pleasure (1904) in which Matisse revises Three Bathers' message while borrowing from its construction to create an image similar to Three Bathers in style but not in meaning. The painting is clearly of a happy scene in which women are interacting both with each other, nature, and the viewer

Matisse, Henri. Luxury, Tranquility and Pleasure. 1904. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

in a positive manner. Bright colors connote cheerfulness and dispel all possibilities of finding any "sobriety" in the painting, "extraordinary" or not. The women in the painting are relaxed and comfortable in their interactions with each other. The viewer, here, is not excluded from the painting as in Cézanne's artwork and is therefore not detached from the women. This feeling is created by the unoccupied side of the picnic blanket that has a tea setting with no one to drink it. This teacup is for the viewer and is Matisse's way of inviting the viewer to join in the women's celebration of nature, life, and womanhood. Yet for all that the painting's message is different from the message that Cézanne's nymphs carried, elements of the composition that Matisse so admired in Cézanne's art are still evident. Both paintings show the women enveloped by nature. In Cézanne's Three Bathers, tree branches form an arc around them, and in Matisse's Luxury, Tranquility, and Pleasure, the tree branch reaches out to the mast of the boat, forming a triangle over the four nudes in the foreground of the painting whose bodies also form a triangle, which is, again taken from the compositional style of Cézanne (Krumrine et al 137). Matisse has borrowed Cézanne's structure and completely rewritten the message in order to glorify women.

Moreover, over the course of time, as Matisse revised Three Bathers more and more, he gradually moved away from the influence of Cézanne, making his artwork more individual. As he came closer to completing his correction of what he saw to be Cézanne's error, he was able to abandon the compositional aspects of Cézanne's work and become more of an artistic individual. It is as though he felt that as the wrong was righted he could let go of the guilt that he might otherwise have felt for letting an incorrect

Matisse, Henri. Pastoral. 1905. Musée de la Ville de Paris, Paris.

message be perpetuated. As such, Matisse's Pastoral (1905) departs from Cézanne's bather paintings in that it depicts both males and females together. Even though the male figure is a child and is situated at on the edge of the scene, this is an important detail. Matisse was showing that both sexes can, in fact, interact without the threat of violence, rape, or seduction. His painting is clearly non-sexual and provides no potential for violence. The elements here that Matisse took from Cézanne are less specific than in Luxury, Tranquility and Pleasure. Instead, Matisse uses large brushstrokes and leaves parts of the canvas uncovered as Cézanne often does, but this aspect is much less specific to the bather paintings and almost entirely unconnected from the messages encoded in paintings such as Three Bathers. The women are still positioned in a triangle yet they are not enshrouded by nature as are the other women and the young boy distorts the triangle, showing its gradual disintegration. This shift away from copying the composition of Three Bathers is a reflection of how by 1905, Matisse had made progress in his quest to create a positive image of women that celebrates their femininity and allows them to coexist in harmony with both men and nature.

(Left) Matisse, Henri. Luxury I. 1907. Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
(Right) Matisse, Henri. Luxury II. 1908. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

Luxury I (1907) and Luxury II (1908) further celebrate women and life in their revisions of Cézanne's negative portrayals of women. In both paintings, the women are no longer protected or hidden by the surrounding natural environment. These women are independent yet unthreatening. They no longer need to be protected by trees nor do the trees need to protect the world from them. The woman in the back is offering flowers to someone but not to either of the other women in the painting. The flowers are a gift for the viewer, a sort of peace offering. Luxury I and Luxury II are two versions of the same scene and thus only differ stylistically. They both reject the composition of Matisse even further by the fact that they no longer make use of the triangular formation. The major constructional similarity that these two paintings have to Three Bathers is their flatly two-dimensional appearance where the women appear artificial both on their own and in relation to the background (Krumrine et al 16). While Luxury I uses unfinished brushstrokes much like Cézanne, Luxury II is painted in a style belonging more to Matisse, which is an almost complete departure from Cézanne. In the one year between Luxury I and Luxury II, Matisse dramatically develops his own personal style of painting.

Revision and Inspiration

Matisse, Henri. Joy of Life. 1906. Barnes Foundation, Merion Pa.

By contrast, Matisse's paintings attempt to revise this concept of woman as evil by creating a positive image of women, a celebration of femininity in works like Joy of Life. Matisse's attitudes towards women were clearly different from Cézanne's. He wrote that he both emphasized and praised the female form in his art because this figure "best permits me to express my almost religious awe towards life" (qtd Wilson 7). This desire to depict his "awe towards life" comes through not only in Joy of Life but in many of his paintings that utilize the nymph motif. This expression of Matisse's amazement at life through the female form goes back to the notion of woman as the source of all life. This clearly is not coherent with Cézanne's portrayal of women as the source of evil and temptation. So, if Matisse were seeking to revise Cézanne's depiction of women in Three Bathers, the question then becomes, why was the painting such an inspiration to him?

Three Bathers was not influential to Matisse for its message but rather for its artistic merit. This is made clear in a letter Matisse wrote to the director of the Musée Petit Palais, "Allow me to tell you that [Three Bathers] is of the first importance in the works of Cézanne because it is a very solid, very complete, realization of a composition that he carefully studied in various canvases, which, though now in important collections, are only studies that culminated in the present work" (qtd in Krumrine et al 34). This letter was about the painting Three Bathers and shows that the reason Matisse admired it was because of Cézanne's superior technique. His feeling that Cézanne's technique was superior is further demonstrated in that Matisse also wrote, "Cézanne is the master of us all" (Durozoi 11), and referred to him as "a sort of god of painting" (Flam 20). Yet for all that it must have been difficult for Matisse to acknowledge that the man he looked up to as a "master" and a "god" could be wrong wrong, Matisse did, and ultimately it is because of this that he sought to revise Cézanne's women. By celebrating women in his own artwork while attempting to copy Cézanne's skill as an artist, Matisse was able to correct, as best he could, what he saw as an inaccurate depiction of women as dangerous and deceitful.

Cézanne's Bathers

Cézanne's bather paintings, including Three Bathers, draw our attention to the female figures central to each works' composition. Matisse also focuses our attention on the female figures as he, like Cézanne, portrays the nymphs in natural, often vast or barren settings, leaving us with little or nothing to focus on but the female form. In Three Bathers, Cézanne depicts three women bathing in a stream surrounded by woods. The viewer is places in a strictly observational role as none of the three women provide any opportunity for interaction in the scene. Furthermore we see the dark colors and grotesque female bodies so typical of Cézanne's bathers. The women are enclosed by nature as depicted by the arc of the tree branches above them. This not only protects them from the world but frames them such that the world is protected from them. This depiction of bathers is peculiar and makes us wonder, why did Cézanne choose to depict women like that? His portrayal of female nymphs stems from his own personal and emotional complexes dealing with women and sexuality. Cézanne's bather paintings depict both men and women together in violent scenes and women by themselves. The latter group includes Three Bathers. Men are outside of the image and there is no possibility for interaction with the women in the painting. Making men merely observers to these scenes, Cézanne thereby places himself outside the realm of their power over him (Krumrine et al. 83). This internal power struggle is further depicted by the rigid composition and structure that he creates in many of the bather paintings, especially Three Bathers. It allows Cézanne full control over the women in the paintings, something he felt incapable of in real life (Krumrine et al 137). Furthermore, the act of bathing not only represents the Christian of baptism but the need for cleansing. Cézanne shows women in an effort to cleanse themselves as an effort to purify them of their malicious actions and evil natures (Krumrine et al 105).

Matisse buys Three Bathers

Of course, in order to understand the inspiration Matisse derived from Cézanne's bathers, it is important to understand his relationship with the painting Three Bathers. In 1895, an art dealer, Ambroise Vollard, introduced Matisse to the works of Cézanne
at a showing of one hundred and fifty of his pieces. Matisse was immediately impressed and wrote to his sons about the wonderful paintings and sketches he saw there, referring specifically to "those strange bathers of extraordinary sobriety" (qtd Krumrine 4). He admired Cézanne's ability to create "sober" masterpieces that were as good as the works exhibited in the salon but that did not follow the normal conventions but were instead "strange" (Durozoi 8). A few years later, Matisse returned to Vollard's gallery with the intentions of buying Van Gogh's Arlésienne (1889) but changed his mind in order to instead buy Van Gogh's Les Alyscamp (c. 1880s) which he could not afford. It was only when he returned with the money he had borrowed from a friend that he noticed Cézanne's Three Bathers. Now unsure of what to do, he went home to think and decided to buy the Cézanne. He did not, however, have the twelve-hundred francs needed to buy it since he had already borrowed the five hundred needed for the Van Gogh (Flam 72). As a result, the purchase of Cézanne's Three Bathers put Matisse hundreds of francs into debt, demonstrating how important to him this painting was. Over the next four decades, it proved to have been a worthy investment. Its acquisition served as an inspiration for his paintings for many years, particularly during the first decade of the twentieth century.